


Signal to Noise

by Wrenlet



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-09-09
Updated: 2005-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-20 11:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4784927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wrenlet/pseuds/Wrenlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, the more he talks the less he says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Signal to Noise

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Numb3rs Slash Ficathon](http://www.livejournal.com/users/spikedluv/142031.html). Technical terms from [Detection of Signals in Noise](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0127448527/ref=sib_rdr_dp/104-2148278-6780739?%5Fencoding=UTF8&no=283155&me=ATVPDKIKX0DER&st=books).
> 
> Spoilers: References to season one.
> 
>  
> 
> [ ](http://community.livejournal.com/numb3rs_awards)

Not all of Charlie's brooding is quiet.

As much as Alan knows about his sons, he does not know this: not all of Charlie's brooding is quiet, and so far in all of both of their lives, only Don has ever been able to tell the difference.

Don knows it the way he has always known Charlie was different, long before his mom and his dad sat him down at the kitchen table -- with Charlie listening from just around the corner, because he always did that, and their parents never believed him and never did see -- and used words like "special teachers" and "gifted." Charlie was always a gift, so Don didn't really get what the big deal was until people started coming to the house to see his brother and sometimes taking him away, for days at a time.

Charlie would be so excited when he came home, or when Don did, bouncing nervously on Don's bed and chattering about things that had passed Don's understanding long ago but he let him talk anyway, because Charlie was his brother. And because Mom and Dad got on his case about Charlie needing "normalcy" and a solid family foundation. And because when the wash of Charlie's words made the hair prickle on Don's arms, the back of his neck, only Don could tell there was something Charlie wasn't saying.

Sometimes it was easy to fix _my locker's too tall_ and sometimes Don wasn't sure he wanted to try _they don't like me_ but he did his best anyway. Some days he didn't like Charlie all that much, either, but big brothers were entitled to liberties that other people just weren't. That was the way of the world, and Don enforced it when he had to.

Sometimes _he smells funny_ Don didn't understand what was wrong any more than Charlie did. But this was Charlie, and Don could never turn his back on his brother. Don made it a point to hang around the house after school more often, looking as menacing as he could at fifteen with his shoulders just beginning to broaden with promise, until the statistics tutor up and quit and that's when Alan discovered he had been publishing Charlie's work under his own name.

Don got high marks for his interrogative technique at Quantico. Later, Coop said he had a "knack," could smell when a contact was lying to them, and he'd laugh, amazed and a little envious and needling Don to tell him how he did it. Don couldn't tell him, not for all the elbows in the ribs _all the blowjobs_ , because he didn't really know. Gut instinct, maybe.

Getting someone _Charlie_ to start talking in the first place was always key. Don learned certain terms during his training, leading questions, evocative manner. It wasn't quite the same thing but, you know, close enough for government work. Coop also taught him a few things that weren't in the manual. A particularly effective arm bar, for example, one that never failed to get a response.

And Don needed a response _not like that, not from Charlie, he didn't mean it_ , he needed the noise if he was ever to find the signal.

It was years _miles and back again_ before Don knew there were other words for what he used to do, words Charlie must have known, or at least understood, since roughly forever. And maybe it was cheating that he went and looked them up, only it wasn't entirely his fault. He watched Charlie and Amita pull a grainy image out of a field of nothing but radar fuzz and well, Don had seen his brother do a lot of cool things over the years, but that was one of the coolest. Definitely top-ten. And it wasn't as if Don really "got" what he was reading, but he could wrap his head around it enough to pick out that, yeah, it was kind of like that.

"Colored Gaussian noise," Don decided that was Charlie. On a good day, one with Frisbee trajectories instead of bullets, graceful parabolas traced across a field of blue, and Don knew Charlie could almost see the formulae in the sky even when he wasn't really thinking about it. Charlie had tried to show him once, scrawling arc after arc over thick construction paper, but at that age, crayons had still had a tendency to snap in his little fists when he got excited, and his voice burred with panic until Don laid his hand over Charlie's on the page. "It's okay, Charlie, I get it." And he hadn't, but it had been what Charlie needed to hear, and maybe that had been the first time.

"Known signals in additive Gaussian noise." The whole week before Don left for Virginia had been full of conversations that went nowhere, Charlie saying anything and everything to keep from telling him the truth _don't go_. Don knew it was just because Charlie didn't understand the FBI the way he did baseball, but none of the talking and nothing _right here, buddy_ he did seemed to help, so after the sixth echoing click of the receiver in his ear, he threw all his energy into _running, and Coop, and he'll never tell_ packing.

"Signals with random phase and amplitude." He claimed he forgot the time difference, and there went the hair on Don's neck because that was bullshit, Charlie never forgot numbers. Sure, his conference was in Hawaii, but still: Charlie. Numbers. Mathematicians in loud, Hawaiian shirts, and Don slid carefully out from under Kim's arm and padded into the living room with the phone, trying to imagine why a call home had upset his little brother.

"Gaussian signal in Gaussian noise." Don learned over time, some things can't be "fixed," not even by big brothers. Because some things _love you_ can't _love you_ ever _love_ be said _you_.

So some days, Don drops by Charlie's classroom just to hear him talk, just to know. Not the "Math for Dummies" class, it doesn't actually matter to Don whether he understands Charlie's lecture. Charlie could be graphing the temperature gradient in the moon's cheese for all Don cares, so as long as it's him. No signal masked in the noise, just Charlie being Charlie.

Don has words that are maybe explanations, maybe not, but that doesn't really matter either. Whatever it takes -- matched filters, determined complex envelopes, things there are no words for at all because Don was simply born with them. He'll be that, if that's what it takes.

Because in a way, Charlie has always been Don's gift, long before he was ever anyone else's.


End file.
